DENVER, CO – MAY 19: Denver Police patrolmen Matt Church, left, and Toby Wilson, right, keep watch as runners run through the Denver Zoo as part of the Colfax Half Marathon in Denver, CO on May 19, 2013. The Colfax Marathon, the Half Marathon and the Urban Ten- Miler were held in City Park in Denver, CO on May 19th, 2013. The popular running events, sponsored by Kaiser Permanente, were sold out and thousands of runners took part in all three races. Temperatures were cool with cloudy skies making for record setting times on both the Marathon and the half marathon by the winners. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)

Denver police officials say a plan to redraw the boundaries of the city’s six police districts will better match patrol resources with neighborhood needs in years to come.

But city dwellers likely will not see the plan’s desired impacts — such as improved response times and a more visible police presence — until the city hires more officers.

“The residents shouldn’t notice any change to police service” when the district boundary lines change as soon as July 14, said Deputy Chief of Operations David Quinones. “Long-term, this is one of many steps we’re taking to improve efficiency in the way we deploy our resources.”

The plan shrinks the notoriously busy police districts that include downtown, southwest Denver and the far northeast part of the city. It enlarges those that cover northwest, northeast and southeast Denver in a way Quinones said more evenly allocates police resources.

The lines haven’t changed since 1995, when the city created a sixth police district to cover the rapidly changing downtown area. Denver’s population has grown and crime patterns have shifted since then, antiquating the existing boundary lines, Chief Robert White has said.

“At a macro level, it really helps us to serve the ever-changing, diverse needs of the city,” said City Councilman Albus Brooks, who leads the council’s public safety committee.

The changes come as the department’s ranks are waning due to retirements, departures and budget constraints that have kept the city from hiring officers since 2008. Voters OK’d a ballot measure in November raising taxes for police and other programs that will allow the city to hire as many as 110 officers this year. But it will take years to offset five years of attrition.

Thirty recruits began training at the police academy last month, bringing the number of officers on the force to 1,384 as of Saturday. The department’s authorized strength is 1,426. The shortage of personnel has slowed response times and made it harder for officers to find time to proactively police.

“As we start getting these bodies, we have a good model that will allow us to deploy resources where they are needed,” Quinones said.

The district lines were redrawn after the department studied calls for service, officer workloads, natural geographic boundaries and the types of crime affecting neighborhoods, among other considerations. The department would not provide a copy of the analytical study that also played a role in the decision.

White’s plan also calls for a smaller number of larger geographical precincts within the districts. One officer patrols each of 78 precincts now. Under the new approach, certain precincts may be manned by two or three officers. Teams of officers will “take ownership” of each precinct and its problems, Quinones said.

“We have these quiet, residential neighborhoods that don’t have a lot of criminal activity, and we have other really busy call precincts that we’re staffing the same based on the old model,” he said. Some precincts would go uncovered during certain shifts. “It just didn’t make sense,” he said.

Police officials would not put a dollar figure to the cost of moving the district lines, and the city’s finance department said only that any costs are included in the police department’s nearly $200 million budget.

“There are a lot of moving pieces to this,” Quinones said.

The department must update its computer software so that crime statistics for geographical areas are transferable from one time period to the next. Thousands of police radios and computers need to be recalibrated or reprogrammed by hand. Officers will learn new call signs. And the city’s 911 dispatchers must be retrained, too.

“The technological changes they will have to make are monumental,” said Lt. Vincent Gavito, vice president of the Denver Police Protective Association.

Carl Simpson, Denver 911 executive director, wouldn’t comment about the impact on his department except to say, in a written statement, that the department is “developing a training curriculum for staff to learn the new districts and precinct borders and any other changes that will be made to support DPD’s team concept.”

The number of officers in each district will change, too, which will mean some officers will be transferred into new territory.

“We’ll adapt and we’ll adjust,” Gavito said. “The lines on a map mean nothing to us. We respond to the demands for service and deal with issues as they flare up. The issue will be staffing. Will we have enough resources and people to cover the expanded areas or not?”

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